A few years ago during deer season, he was taking his wife to dinner when someone approached him in the parking lot. They needed repairs to a shotgun. Prater obliged.

But even Prater, a gunsmith based in rural Lewistown, would far rather have advance time on repairs.

For hunters, that means now. Dove season is still two months away, and we've got longer than that until most hunting. So now is the time to fix your shotgun with a stuck choke tube or your pump gun that no longer pumps.

'It would be nice if people started (considering hunting gun repairs) at least by August,' said Prater, 65, who has been repairing guns on a part-time basis since 1990. 'What they don't realize is we don't keep every part on hand. So we can't always fix things at the last minute.

'But you'll always have someone who thinks, ‘Hey, this weekend is opening day of duck season, and my gun wasn't shooting real well last season. I better get it fixed.' '

That Prater uses duck hunters in his example is no accident. Waterfowlers put shotguns to the ultimate test. Sometimes the best Prater can do for a duck gun is to get it shooting again.

'Even though it looks like an old rusty fencepost,' Prater adds.

Prater also regularly works on firearms that resemble works of art. While much of his gunsmithing business centers around cleaning and repairing modern shotguns, Prater has a passion for older hammer-style blackpowder guns and side-by-side shotguns.

'There's a lot of people that won't work on those, but I enjoy them,' Prater said.

For proof he points to the squirrel gun he built 30 years ago, a .32-caliber replica of a Tennessee mountain rifle. 'It's as deadly as any of today's .22s,' he said.

Hanging above that gun is a .62-caliber flintlock — a replica of a Pennsylvania fowler — with a 46-inch barrel that proved not-quite-so deadly last fall. 'I missed a deer with that gun, but it was all me,' Prater said. 'He was standing there 30 yards broadside, but when I shot I must have jerked.'

Still, Prater has no plans to opt for a more modern firearm. He's had a love affair with guns since he was 12 and growing up in the Chicago suburb of Maywood, where his father was superintendent of schools.

Prater's interest in guns has only blossomed since he attended college at Western Illinois University. He worked as a teacher and coal miner before completing gunsmith school in Burlington, Iowa, in 1989. For the past two years he's been focusing more on firearms after retiring from a job with the Metropolitan Sanitary District of Chicago's facility near Cuba.

Even with steady work, Prater says, 'This would be hard to make a living at unless you have a specialty, like guys who build competition pistols.'

That may explain why gunsmiths are generally few and far between. Yet there's definitely a market for their services.

'There's a lot of people that are scared to death even on a (Remington) 870 to pull out that trigger assembly,' Prater said. 'They're afraid it will fall apart in pieces.'

When he's not working on client's guns, Prater spends time with his own 'works in progress.' Several such guns are scattered around his workshop in various stages. Among those is an Ohio half-stock .32-caliber that belonged to his great-grandfather, Brazil Prater.

Work on that gun is purely sentimental, Prater said. And he has several clients who come to him for the same service, since he also does rebluing — restoring rusty, pitted guns as close as possible to a new finish.

'Some of those guns, people will spend more than the gun is worth just to hang it on the wall,' he said.

Prater understands. That's the same spot his great-grandfather's gun will one day occupy.

JEFF LAMPE is Journal Star outdoors columnist. He can be reached at jlampe@pjstar.com, or 686-3212.